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The Mistral sale: No reason to panic

The recent news that the French government has agreed to sell one or more of its Mistral amphibious assault ships to Russia has led to virtual panic in some quarters. The cold warriors who have never quite gotten over the view that the Soviet Union Russia is hell-bent on threatening the rest of the world seem to believe that Russia will use these ships to attack (or at least threaten to attack) any neighboring states that dare to oppose it. Here’s a typical statement (from Vlad Socor):

NATO is being tested, with “its future at stake,” not so much in Afghanistan as the line recently went, but rather in Brussels itself and in the Alliance’s most influential capitals. The latest among these tests –one that the Alliance seems only determined to side-step– is over the proposed French naval modernization program for Russia. The program envisages selling one French Mistral-class warship –a state-of-the art, offensive power-projection capability– to Russia and licensing the construction of three or four ships of the same class in Russia, potentially usable in the Baltic and Black Sea.

And a little later in the same article:

Georgia remains a prime target of opportunity for Russia in the Black Sea basin at present. A Mistral-class ship would enable Russia to threaten amphibious and helicopter landings on Georgia’s sea coast, with far greater speed and effectiveness than those of Russia’s existing capabilities. Russia’s naval command publicly alluded to the Mistral’s potential use against Georgia when starting the talks with France for the sale. Paris has ignored Georgian officials’ appeals (EDM, September 18, November 2, December 2, 2009). Meanwhile, Georgia is an all-but disarmed country and (as a thwarted NATO aspirant) is not covered by any external security guarantees.

There is a widespread assumption that these ships would be used in either the Black or Baltic Seas. This allows the writer to claim that the ships will increase the threat Russia poses to Georgia or the Baltic States. Most of this speculation is based on a single comment by Admiral Vysotsky, the Commander in Chief of the Russian Navy, about Russia being able to win the 2008 war with Georgia more quickly if it had the Mistral. He most likely said this in order to increase the navy’s chances of getting more procurement funding. The Russian navy would play a minor role in any conflict in the region (except with Turkey, god forbid). A future conflict with Georgia, just like the previous one, would primarily involve ground forces, with air force cover to the extent it’s still capable of that. The Navy would have a small role, with or without the Mistral — just enough to justify continued funding.

Furthermore, I very much doubt that the Mistral ship(s) will be based in the Black Sea or the Baltic. All of the Russian reports I’ve seen on this assume that these ships will go to the two big fleets (Northern and Pacific). I share this belief, in part because of prestige factors — the Black Sea Fleet is a bit of a backwater, despite all the politics that swirl around it. The Baltic Fleet even more so. The Russian navy is not going to put its most modern (and one of its largest) ships in a backwater. Second, basing in the Black Sea will be tricky. The agreement with Ukraine prevents Russia from placing new ships in Sevastopol. It’s possible, of course, that Yanukovich will agree to allow this to happen, but I think he will seek to avoid needlessly antagonizing the anti-Russian part of the Ukrainian population and will not do this. This means that a Mistral-class ship would have to be based at Novorossiisk. This presents various logistical challenges — there isn’t very much space there now and the base expansion is not ready yet and won’t be for several more years. So even if Russia wanted to place a new Mistral-class ship in the Black Sea, it would be difficult for it to do so in the short term. And more than one is simply out of the question.

A second concern for the cold warriors is that the Mistral would significantly increase the Russian Navy’s force projection capability. This is also based on the Vysotsky comment — the part about how with this ship, Russian troops could have gotten to Georgia more quickly. But Russia has plenty of domestically built amphibs — some of which were used in August 2008. The main constraint then (as Vysotsky noted) was the speed of the ships vs the distance from their bases in Sevastopol and Novorossiisk to the conflict area. By the time they got to Georgia, all that was left to do was to mop up. Is the Mistral that much faster than their existing ships? Its top speed is 18.8 knots. Ropuchas and Alligators can go 16-18 knots. So the talk about Russian troops being able to get to Georgia faster on the Mistral is just talk. They just don’t need the Mistral for the purpose of troop transport.

There are three potential reasons for the purchase: 1) As a helo platform, 2) as a command ship (if they get some advanced electronics as part of the deal), 3) as means of rebuilding the domestic shipbuilding industry (if they get to build the other 3 under license). These are obviously not mutually exclusive. I have discussed reasons 2 and 3 before (here and here). Galrahn has an excellent discussion of reason 1. Basically, he argues, helicopters are a key part of Russian naval doctrine. They need new helicopter carriers and may be concerned that their domestic shipbuilding industry is not currently capable of building such a ship on its own. So they buy one from the French to improve this core capability and hope to also get a license to build more domestically so they can revive their shipbuilding industry.

The last thing they want is to be dependent on foreign purchases for the long term. The Russian military’s culture is based on self-sufficiency. The admission that they have to buy a major ship from abroad, and from a NATO member no less, is deeply traumatic for top commanders and therefore something they hope to avoid having to do in the future. To say that this deal will open the floodgates to future NATO arms sales to Russia fundamentally misunderstands this point. Though from my point of view, the more NATO sells arms to Russia the better. Ideally, NATO would also buy certain kinds of arms from Russia. They still make really good machine guns, for example. If NATO states and Russia develop a relationship where they sell equipment to each other, they are much less likely to view each other with hostility and distrust. And this can only help increase stability in Europe.

So, to summarize, the Mistral is likely to be based in the Pacific and/or Northern Fleets, where it is very unlikely to be a threat to Georgia or the Baltic States. Its purpose will not be to transport troops for amphibious landings, but to carry helicopters and/or to serve as a command center for naval task forces. And Russian leaders hope to use the newly established relationship with the French to revive their domestic shipbuilding, so they don’t have to buy ships from abroad in the future.

Dmitry, unfortunately you are wrong about this. The Mistral sale reflects many dangerous things. First of all it is a breach in NATO solidarity and possibly a breach of EU rules. It shows that there is little perception in France (not to mention elsewhere) that Russia could threaten other neighboring states. this division over threat assessment reflects the lack of NATO cohesion and has negative implications should an Article V scenario develop. Second, there is plenty of reason to expect deployment of this or subsequent Mistral-like ships in either the Baltic or Black Sea. This is not just due to Vysotsky’s comments which are serious once you realize that the Russian interest in the Mistral came right after the war with Georgia. Indeed, if you had analyzed the large Rusian exercises in the summer and fall of 2009 Ladoga and Zapad 2009 which were actually one exercise split in two to avcoid OSCE and CFE monitoring, uyou would have seen that the centerpiece of Zapad 2009 is an amphibious landing on the shores of Poland, precisely the operation for which Mistral is perfectly suited. I don’t know how you could have missed that.

Thanks for your comment, Steve. I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. I just have a different attitude towards Russian intentions than you do, I think. I’ll have to write up my views of the sources of Russian foreign policy and the ideas behind it sometime soon, but I’m afraid I don’t have time to go into it now. Suffice it to say that I just do not see Russia as a revisionist state that poses a significant MILITARY threat to its neighbors (as opposed to using economic or political means to achieve its ends).

But let me address your specific points: I agree that it’s a breach in NATO solidarity, but 1) I don’t think all NATO states have to agree all the time on arms sales. There have certainly been previous disagreements on arms sales to various Middle Eastern states; and 2) in this case I think the French side is right. The best way forward with Russia is to integrate it into European security. I wouldn’t take Medvedev’s plan as a starting point, except perhaps for a conversation that leads to something useful. But selling Russia Western arms is likely to lead to closer military relations in the long run, and I see this as a good thing.

On the Zapad/Ladoga exercise: I did analyze that exercise — you can look back in the blog archive — though I mostly focused on the technological side. Two responses also here.

1) The fact that a military conducts an exercise does not mean that it is preparing to carry out such an operation. This is like the argument that because Russia had plans for how it would carry out an invasion of Georgia, this meant that they were planning the war in advance. You know as well as I that it’s the job of military planners to have plans available for likely contingencies. This doesn’t mean that the government is planning to carry them out. Think of all the plans the US military had for invading the Soviet Union. There were circumstances when they might have taken place. But this doesn’t mean the US government was just waiting for an excuse to invade.

2) As I’ve argued before, Russia doesn’t need the Mistral to conduct amphibious landings. They already have plenty of fairly good amphibious landing ships. The fact that they conducted the exercise as part of Zapad 2009 (and quite successfully) is a proof of that. What they need the Mistral for is either as a command ship (if they get the advanced electronics) or as a helo carrier. Or ideally (for them), both.

Finally, on basing. I still think that the ships will be based in one of the two major fleets, for the same reasons I previously stated. You don’t really address those arguments. And Russian interest in the Mistral came almost a year after the Georgia war. I don’t think they had much in common EXCEPT insofar as Russian interest in military reform and modernization in general was much increased by the flaws that war exposed in their military.

I’m with Dmitry on this one. When you look at it, a Mistral landing in Poland would only constitute a feeble force, which probably could be rounded up by the Polish police. Russia would need a much larger force for this effort — AND WHY? — which they don’t have. Besides, it looks like when the Russians (and Belarussians) mount a ground exercise, they simply drag out old Soviet exercise plans (which had hardly anything to do with fighting, but were demonstrations — most notably all of them concluding with a river crossing), plus an NCW overlay these days. That’s evidence of a military stuck in a rut, with political levels hardly noticing. I agree with Dmitry that Russia is not a revisionist (revanchist?) state, though Putin has been rude to us from time to time, and we feel hurt (though what Putin does, per his Munich 2007 speech, is complain about NeoCon statements, which he took as official U.S. policy). But I come back to the point that I’ve made before: how does this Mistral ship, with no guns, and not a very big force to land (if it can), change the whole strategic picture in Europe? It doesn’t. There were no NATO mechanisms in the Cold War to control each country’s arms sales, but there was the COCOM, which worked very well among the countries. Does Steve think that should be resurrected? Richard Perle and Steve Bryen are still around and could run it.